Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya knew that One for All was weird.
From the very beginning, he knew it acted and worked differently than almost any other quirk. Midoriya also knew that he grew up differently from most of his peers (most people don’t have people putting spider lilies on their desks semi-daily).
So when his quirk started to further push the limits of quirks themselves, Midoriya, not knowing what it felt like to have a normal quirk, didn’t know. He would later blame himself for not noticing earlier all of the weird things that would soon occur but in his defense, the amount of stress he was under by being attacked multiple times by villains was enough to kill several coral reefs (it also didn’t help to have a 200-year-old legacy placed upon his shoulders).
…
“Hey Midori, do you think I should get the strawberry ones or the chocolate ones?” Mina asked Izuku, leaning forward to try and get a better look at the mochi. He tilted his head.
“Why are you asking me? Uraraka knows more about this than I do” Izuku said, looking down at the paper in his hands with half-assed notes about different foods they were to buy. Grocery shopping with Mina was always fun, she always found a way to make the most boring of things at least a little more enjoyable. Izuku was lucky that he and Mina were the ones who were meant to go and get the groceries this week. Mina seemed to understand that sometimes talking was a bit hard to do. It was a warm day too, which Izuku was grateful for. The light wind that swept throughout the mall only slightly made his hands ache.
Mina groaned, dropping her head down. “ I know, I know but I really really don’t want to dig through my purse to find my phone,” Mina turned her head to look up at Izuku, who was still busy trying to make sense of Kaminari’s handwriting. Izuku looked down at his arms, which were currently holding all of the groceries that they had already gathered up (plus Mina’s purse), and then looked at Mina raising one eyebrow.
“Well,” Izuku said, turning to look at the mochi, “If I were to eat mochi I would probably go with something that would be good to eat after a very long day so,” Izuku put his hand on his chin, thinking for a moment. Mina straightened up, still looking at Izuku expectantly. Izuku thought for another moment or two, before nodding and smiling. “I would probably go with the strawberry mochi” He stated, turning towards Mina.
Mina smiled, before reaching down and grabbing the strawberry mochi that looked the best. Izuku looked back down at the paper in his hand. “I think that's all we needed to grab so we can check out and then we can leave”. Mina handed Izuku the mochi and grabbed her purse from Izuku’s arm. Then, together they started to walk to the front of the store, with some lighthearted chatter being thrown between the two.
“Hey, Midori? I have a sort of personal question I kinda want to ask you about,” Mina asked once they got to the front. Izuku raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Mina who was busy checking that they had everything that they needed. Mina and Izuku weren’t the closest of friends but he could confidently say that Mina was someone he liked to hang out with. If she wanted to talk about something ‘personal’ he could probably give her an honest answer (the constant villain attacks also helped him trust her a bit more).
Izuku made a short humming noise, signaling for Mina to continue, before turning back to the groceries to finish sorting them. Mina sucked in a breath and looked up at Izuku. “Uhm, what, uh-erm, I was just wondering uh, do you know that you kinda like sleepwalk? Like, a lot of times I walk downstairs to grab a snack and-y’know your kinda just-standing there, with your eyes kinda glowing-did you know your eyes glow sometimes?-that’s unrelated sorry but I just-I don’t know, I kinda wanted to ask why you sleepwalk so often?” Mina looked slightly uncomfortable, her eyes were looking everywhere but at Izuku. Meanwhile, he had frozen.
Sleepwalking? I’ve been sleepwalking?
Izuku shook his head a little, trying to ground his head before he started to spiral. Izuku looked back up at Mina, who was busy counting the number of spices that they had in their bags. Izuku smiled, a little uneasy.
“I’ve been sleepwalking? Hehe, uhm-sorry ‘bout that, I didn’t know that I was doing that,” Izuku reached a hand up to his neck to awkwardly rub it. “I’ll try to stop the sleepwalking thing, sorry about freaking you out but-” Izuku was about to continue before Mina quickly looked up and started waving her hands around, cutting him off.
“Oh no no no! I didn’t mean it like that, I just-well,” She looked down, slightly embarrassed, “I looked up the reasons behind sleepwalking and while it’s primarily genetic, it can be amplified with stress and not getting enough sleep, among some..other things-I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay-well, relatively okay” She finished, grinning sheepishly.
Oh.
Izuku shook off his startled face before smiling at Mina. “Thank you,” She looked up to meet his eyes, “I’m fine Mina,”. He smiled a bit brighter at Mina and a second later Mina smiled back at him.
BOOM
The duo jumped away from the counter violently, the sound of the blast was almost deafening.
“Wh-what was that?” Mina yelled, whipping her head around, trying to identify the direction the blast came from. Izuku was about to yell back when a scream was heard coming from the back of the store. Mine and Izuku startled, before dropping their groceries to run outside.
“Come on pretty lady, I just wann'cha y'ur number” A tall muscular woman was on the ground, having been pushed by a towering villain. Mina charged forward, jumping over the woman's head and socking the villain in the face. The villain was thrown backward, hitting a wall and sliding down- unconscious. Mina turned around and grabbed the woman's arm.
“Midoriya! Get the other civilians out! I’ll call the police” Izuku nodded, before running around the store, grabbing people’s attention who were too stunned by the explosion to run away by yelling like a madman about a villain attacking the store.
Izuku ran to the front, after seeing that most of the store was already evacuated.
“Help!!” Izuku slid to a stop. He looked back at the store. The villain apparently had friends, as a new villain was holding a young teenage man by the throat. Izuku blanched, before running forward with the motivation of an Olympic swimmer.
Izuku jumped up towards the sky, 5 feet away from the villain, before activating One for All: Full Cowling 20% and leveling a devastating punch to the top of the villain's head. The villain must have had some heavy-duty support gear as the villain dropped the teen and was only knocked 40 feet away.
Izuku kneeled on the ground by the teenager. He looked over the guy for any other injuries, excusing the ones on his neck and his back where he had fallen.
“Hey, Man,” The teen started, voice slightly raspy. “Thanks for that”. Izuku looked up from where his eyes had been focused on the teen's arms. Izuku grinned at the teen.
“Midoriya!!” Mina shouted off in the distance. Izuku whipped his head around just in time to see the villain he had punched charging back at him. Some heavy-duty support gear indeed.
Izuku powered up Full Cowling 20% again, pointing his hand at the villain and shooting a burst of air from his fingers. Shoot style.
The air sped towards the villain faster than the normal eye could keep up with it. As soon as the air hit the villain, they exploded. Not like exploded as in fire and bombs, but like exploded like a balloon popping, and taken away with the wind.
What the fu-
Izuku felt a hand wrap around his neck before he was thrown off the ground and into a wall. Izuku hit the wall with a firm smack. Izuku’s eyes rolled back into his head for a second before he felt himself being pulled into the arms of yet another villain. A headache that had started during the beginning of the battle became a searing pain in his head. The villain’s right arm wrapped around him, like some sort of demented hug, with the other arm bringing a knife up to his neck.
“Take another step forward and I kill this kid,” Villain #3 (4? Who threw him?) shouted, pressing the tip of the knife into his neck slightly. Izuku, internally panicking, looked around and saw that the teen had run away from the villain as soon as Izuku was captured, Izuku relaxed. Slightly. “Come on man!! JUST GIVE ME THE MONEY!!”.
Izuku looked up (which was slightly difficult to do), and stared at the villain who was holding him hostage, shaking slightly. The villain’s face was framed with a mask that made it look like they were a dragon or some creature of the sort.
“GIVE ME THE MONEY YOU ASSHATS,” The villain shouted again. Izuku turned his head to look forward. The police had gotten there apparently within the time it took for Izuku to get most of the people out of the building and-wait was that-?
Aizawa stood behind the police, one hand holding onto Mina’s shoulder, pushing her back from the scene, while the other was gripped onto a policeman in front of him like he was about to pounce. A panicked expression was displayed clearly on his face, so it was probably safe to say that he looked a lot worse than he felt-which was probably pretty horrific ‘cause apparently this headache was determined to be the worst thing to ever be felt by humankind.
“I’M NOT ASKING AGAIN, GIVE ME THE GODDAMN MONEY,” The villain roared in his ear and pressed the knife further into his neck. He hissed with pain, both from the blade pressed to his throat and the searing sound of a villain’s hysterical begging. His vision went black for a second. The throbbing of his headache increased.
What in the world is that knife made out of? Does it have some sort of chemical on the blade-oh shit, what if it’s poisoned?? Shit, shit, shit-
The knife being held to his throat started to hurt even more. Izuku couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, not the police, the villain, or Mr. Aizawa. But from what he could see, the villain was starting to get impatient. Soon the villain would lose his calm and-
The villain's other hand (the one securing Izuku) was suddenly lifted up to his mouth.
Izuku’s body reacted before his brain had time to register what in the world was going on.
Later, when he would be asked how his teeth were strong enough to cut off someone's fingers, he would awkwardly shrug and brush it off as a quirk thing. The person would accept it and move on to another question.
Currently, however, Izuku would in fact not brush off the fact that he currently had two fingers in his mouth.
Izuku pushed the villain away, which wasn’t that difficult, and ran forward, with his head hung low so as to not get any more blood into his body (and to keep the feeling of decapitated fingers in his mouth). Izuku slid to a stop (not very gracefully), and Aizawa rushed and crouched down next to him as Izuku held a hand to his mouth. The police ran forward, grabbing the villains that were either writhing in pain or severely injured.
The world was getting a bit too blurry for Izuku. He closed his eyes in an attempt to quell nausea that was slowly but surely making its way throughout Izuku (and an attempt to try and stop thinking about the fucking fingers in his mouth) .
“He-..-riya…you-..breath-...”
Izuku was pretty sure that Aizawa was telling him to breathe or to calm down or fucking something but it was a bit difficult when he had fucking fingers in his mouth-
Before he could process it, his mouth was forced open, and all the blood and the fucking fingers- spilled out. Someone put something in his mouth, but he tried to spit it out. This tastes horrible.
“...-idoriya,” Izuku opened his eyes a tiny bit to glance upwards. Aizawa was now sitting next to him with Mina on his other side, stopping him from falling face-first into the fingers and blood. Everything was still blurry and everyone's voices randomly would fade into the background.
Izuku stared at Aizawa's face, who had turned away to talk with a policeman about god knows what. The policeman seemed to be bad because Aizawa's gaze sharpened and his hand (the one that wasn’t on his shoulder-wait, on his shoulder?). Izuku pulled his gaze from the scar on Aizawa's face and looked forward, a bit dazed.
Izuku blinked. Then he blinked again.
Ninth?
Izuku was confused. He must have hit his head very hard and was now hallucinating because as he stared straight ahead, he stared directly at First, the original holder of One for all.
The man stared directly at Izuku, eyes seeming to widen the longer he stared. Izuku probably would have been freaking out more that he was able to see a dead man, but in his floaty mental state, all he could bring himself to do was wave.
First waved back, a little star-struck.
Izuku looked around sluggishly for the last time, taking in the scene unfolding around him.
Ninth? Can you see me?
The villains seemed to be arguing with the police. The villain who Izuku bit was laying on the ground-passed out-as the paramedics tried to slow the bleeding of his fingers. Civilians in the surrounding area were being shipped away, with some people having their phones held high above their heads, recording the whole incident. Mina was still at his shoulder, trying to get him to drink some water (unless she was trying to waterboard him).
Izuku turned back to First, who had stepped slightly closer.
Izuku tilted his head to the side and smiled.
“Hi First,”
Then, Izuku Midoriya, the successor to All Might, the arch-nemesis of Shigaraki Tomura-the leader of the League of Villains, felt his eyes roll back and the sweet release of unconsciousness take over his body.